Erik and Lyle Menendez at the moment are eligible for parole after choose resentences them

LOS ANGELES — A California choose on Tuesday resentenced Erik and Lyle Menendez, making the siblings eligible for parole within the shotgun killings of their dad and mom greater than three a long time in the past.

The ruling from Los Angeles Superior Court docket Decide Michael Jesic got here after months of delays, opposition from Los Angeles County’s new prime prosecutor and a sequence of witnesses who testified throughout a typically emotional listening to Tuesday that Erik, 54, and Lyle, 57, had modified for the higher and at the moment are “completely different males,” as a cousin, Anamaria Baralt, put it.

The Menendez brothers have been serving sentences of life with out the opportunity of parole for the homicide of José and Kitty Menendez on Aug. 20, 1989, at their Beverly Hills residence.

Jesic mentioned they’d be resentenced to 50 years to life, a jail time period that may make them instantly eligible for parole. He mentioned he didn’t imagine they posed an “unreasonable danger” if launched.

A California parole board will resolve if the lads are appropriate for launch.

The brothers started giving statements through videolink instantly after the choose’s ruling, with Lyle saying he made no excuses for killing his dad and mom and acknowledging that he made a “mockery of the authorized system” after his arrest by looking for to have individuals perjure themselves on his behalf.

“At the moment, 35 years later, I’m deeply ashamed of who I used to be,” he mentioned.

Erik echoed these feedback. His crimes have been “merciless and harsh,” he mentioned, including that he’s “instantly chargeable for all of it.”

Amongst these to talk on the brothers’ behalf was a retired choose who described himself as “very pro-law enforcement” and mentioned he’d by no means earlier than testified for somebody convicted of a criminal offense.

One other witness, a rapper who goes by “X-Raided,” mentioned he met the siblings in jail and attributed his launch below California’s youthful offender legislation to them.

“I went to what I name Menendez College,” he mentioned, recalling how they helped him and different inmates be taught to specific regret and acquire perception into their crimes.

Throughout two trials between 1993 and 1996, the brothers testified that they killed their dad and mom in self-defense after Lyle threatened to reveal his father’s alleged abuse of his brother.

Prosecutors described the killings as cold-blooded and financially-motivated.

The primary trial ended with a hung jury. They have been convicted of first-degree homicide after the second.